There haven't been that many bull-riding movies that I know of. Fewer actually than I think, because two of the movies I call bull-riding movies are in fact more like rodeo movies.
The first, of course, is "Eight Seconds", dealing with the life and times of Lane Frost. It isn't a bad movie. There are some questions as to its overall authenticity, and even the actor who played Lane Frost complained that the movie had tarted the situation up somewhat. But as bull riding movies go, it's actually pretty good, and I'm told that Stephen Baldwin's portrayal of Tuff Hedeman was, if anything, a little too pleasant. (I'm reminded of the movie "The Desert Fox", where James Mason played Field Marshal Erwin Rommel. When the movie came out, someone asked Rommel's former adjutant, Hans Speidel, what he thought of Mason's portrayal. "Altogether too polite," Speidel replied.)
The best part of Eight Seconds is the way the bull rides tend to last fifteen or twenty seconds. I literally lost count of seconds during Tuff Hedeman's 8+8 tribute ride at the NFR. But having viewed this movie, I am moved to ask the following question: why was Stephen Baldwin such a lackluster bull rider in Ty Murray's Celebrity Bull Riding Challenge if in fact he'd ridden bulls fifteen or twenty seconds in the movie? Oh, right, Horrywood. I forgot. There's also an extremely young Renee Zellweger in the movie, officially listed as a Buckle Bunny. Her parents must have been thrilled.
Another halfway decent one is "My Heroes Have Always Been Cowboys". It's a bit freighted with melodrama, but it isn't awful. I like Scott Glenn, and it had Tuff Hedeman and Jim Sharp riding bulls as stunt men, and Leon Coffee as a stunt bull fighter. But there isn't much bull-riding per se in the movie, and the argument-to-bull-ride ratio is far too high.
Then there's "Urban Cowboy", the John Travolta vehicle that showed him spending much quality time aboard a mechanical bull. I bring it up solely to puckishly offer the slanderous allegation that Chris Shivers would have scored 92 points on such bulls.
Then there is "Junior Bonner" which had the good grace to take place in Arizona (the Prescott Rodeo, no less, where I as a child suffered from a heavy case of trench mouth) but has the bad grace to be a really bad movie. You know you're in for a long evening when you run into characters with names like "Elvira Bonner" and "Red Terwiliger". And it stars Joe Don Baker! How much more can we take? But the movie's real quirk is casting Robert Preston as Ace Bonner, alcoholic bon vivant and wandering Man About Town. I kept expecting him to clap his hands to his head and say "Now THINK, gentlemen, THINK!" Either that or to break out a natty uniform and lead the rodeo-goers in a rousing rendition of Seventy-Six Marching Stetsons.
I love the way that every time the buzzer sounds at the end of a ride, the movie cuts to stock footage of a buzzer nailed to a pole, as though we lunkheaded suburbanites wouldn't know that that loud blaring sound was coming from an electric buzzer. Heaven knows I was often confused by this; more than once I thought Steve McQueen himself was the source of the noise.
Anyway. That's my overview of bull riding movies for now. I'm sure there are others, but the pain of discussing Junior Bonner has clouded my judgment.
The only two I've seen are Bull Rider and 8 Seconds. I liked them both, for the most part, but didn't quite get the hoopla over 8 Seconds. It was good, but.......well, maybe it's because I was a very new fan when I saw it, so bull riding hadn't been in my blood for years. Funny story about it:
I couldn't get on a bull riding board w/o hearing about this movie and a friend of mine loved it, so I rented it. Now, I knew nothing of these riders except a their names. So, after it's over, I, who likes Hollywood endings, call my friend and say: "He's dead?! You didn't tell me he died!!". Went to be mildly depressed that night.
What I didn't get was that the movie was supposed to be what a lot of riders watched that got them into bull riding as a profession. My thought was "Hey! This is a sport that requires you to travel around the country while paying you almost nothing, unless you have the rare luck to be one of the best in the world, and at the end, death is more than likely!" *sigh* I guess the draw of buckle bunnies is bigger than I thought. But, that's a whole other rant that I won't get into now.
At any rate, it was good, I just didn't think it was GREAT.
"actor who played Lane Frost"
Name dropping ahead: Luke Perry. I met him and he's a very nice guy. However, it was before I saw this movie, so we didn't discuss it.
The only two I've seen are Bull Rider and 8 Seconds. I liked them both, for the most part, but didn't quite get the hoopla over 8 Seconds. It was good, but.......well, maybe it's because I was a very new fan when I saw it, so bull riding hadn't been in my blood for years. Funny story about it:
I couldn't get on a bull riding board w/o hearing about this movie and a friend of mine loved it, so I rented it. Now, I knew nothing of these riders except a their names. So, after it's over, I, who likes Hollywood endings, call my friend and say: "He's dead?! You didn't tell me he died!!". Went to be mildly depressed that night.
What I didn't get was that the movie was supposed to be what a lot of riders watched that got them into bull riding as a profession. My thought was "Hey! This is a sport that requires you to travel around the country while paying you almost nothing, unless you have the rare luck to be one of the best in the world, and at the end, death is more than likely!" *sigh* I guess the draw of buckle bunnies is bigger than I thought. But, that's a whole other rant that I won't get into now.
At any rate, it was good, I just didn't think it was GREAT.
"actor who played Lane Frost"
Name dropping ahead: Luke Perry. I met him and he's a very nice guy. However, it was before I saw this movie, so we didn't discuss it.
I saw it after I'd already learned Lane's fate, but I imagine it would have been a shock. You expect a certain level of decorum from sports movies, and one of their rules is that the main star doesn't die; he overcomes. I don't know what he overcomes - poverty, alcoholism, an unreliable truck, racism, peculiar magnetic effects - but he overcomes.
Except in this movie. In this movie, it was the bull that got'er did.
I don't have any experience with buckle bunnies at all. They simply don't occur in my professional field - you simply never see young women lounging near the coffee pots where I work hoping to service a collision-avoidance system engineer. And what a strange world it would be if there were. My point seems to have taken a U-turn and veered sharply toward the gutter, so maybe I'll just stop...
The only bull riding movies I have seen are "8 Seconds" and "Shadows of the Past" which has been released in America as "A Hell of A Ride". I love both of these movies.
The photography in "A Hell of A Ride" is much better quality as it is done in high quality digital but it was made recently which is why the quality is so good. It is a really awesome movie.
Lane Frost will always be one of my heroes I have watched 8 seconds so many times. Luke Perry was very good in this.
I will have to look for the Bullrider movie also so thanks for mentioning that one also.
